Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Meru (2015) [R] ****

A
film review by Brian Tallerico for RogerEbert.com on Aug. 14, 2015.

The
connection between the legendary George Mallory and renowned climber Conrad Anker, one of the subjects of Meru, is more than just historical.
Believe it or not, Anker is the man who found Mallory’s body on Mount Everest
in 1999, which made headlines around the world. [Blogger's note: Mallory tried and failed to summit Everest in 1924, 29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and sherpa Tensing Norgay succeeded in 1953.] Anker also seems to
wholeheartedly subscribe to the theory captured by Mallory’s three most famous words:
Because it’s there. In that
oft-quoted phrase, so much of the human desire to surmount the impossible is
captured. Although the quote is often misinterpreted as a way to offer proof of
inconsequential reasons to do what logic tells us we should not. Another
interpretation is that there aren’t words to capture why people go to the Moon,
come back from the brink of death, or climb Mount Everest. They just do. Because
it’s there. The men of Meru tried to
go to a place that all common sense dictated they should not. They tried to
climb a sheer wall that no one had ever climbed before. Their story is
undeniably interesting. However, and this is the tricky part about reviewing
documentaries, the movie about that story is flawed. A bit too much time is spent
in admiration and hero worship over the indefatigable will of these men, when
it is the footage on that mountainside that matters. It’s a story that speaks
for itself, and so the emphasis on talking heads explaining it to us is
dispiriting.

The
Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru has long been the ultimate prize in mountain
climbing. It is a ridiculous creation of Mother Nature, perched over 20,000
feet above the Ganges River and essentially flat and straight-up. It is not a
mountain; it is a wall. At the most challenging part of its ascent, climbers
often travel 200 meters in ONE DAY. That’s the inch-by-inch progress it takes
to get to the top. And if you plan poorly or merely get hit by bad weather, you
better turn around if you ever want to see your family again. As explained in
the film, it is the anti-Everest in that there are no sherpas. No help. No one
to do the grunt work. You are on your own climbing a smooth, featureless face.

In
October 2008, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin
(credited with co-directing Meru) and
Renan Ozturk tried to tackle Meru.
They filmed much of the perilous journey, and this material is easily the
strongest in Meru. When the
filmmakers stop the musical score and stop the narration, and simply allow us
to listen to the wind and the snow pummeling these men, the physical challenge
is palpable. The trio failed in 2008. In a remarkable scene, they look almost
close enough to the summit to touch it, but they figure out that the sun will
set soon, they have nowhere to camp, and they would not survive the conditions.
They look like they literally could throw something to the top, but they have
to turn back and go all the way back down. They were 100 meters away.

Defeated,
it looks unlikely that the trio will go back again. In an interesting footnote not
given enough attention, Jimmy reveals that it was the failure of another group
of climbers to reach the top that really got him thinking about attempting it
again. There’s something so attractive about being the first. Risking your life
to be second isn’t as exciting. And so after some remarkable speed bumps are placed
in their way but surpassed, the trio takes another shot at it.

Meru works best, by far,
in its You Are There moments. You
hear heavy breathing, the elements whip the tent, and it sounds like the world
is ending. At one point in the first climb—and it’s really why it failed—they
are stuck, literally, on the side of the mountain for FOUR DAYS, as the
elements made it impossible to move. Why would anyone do this? Negative 20
degree weather in the shade. Why do it beyond because it’s there? Meru
doesn’t really go into that, which would be fine, if it didn’t spend so much
time talking about mountain climbing. The film is weighed down with interview
footage, a lot of which is essentially fan service—how great these guys are,
how courageous they are, how tough they are. And I’m not arguing they’re not,
just questioning the cinematic value of such an approach. Meru is billed as an awe-inspiring nature documentary, and it works
best when it remembers to be one. [Tallerico’s rating: ** ½ out of 3 stars]

[Blogger's note: I was not put off by the running commentary. It provided necessary intellectual understanding, supporting and enriching the direct experience the video gave of the climb.]